


rattle your chains

by wanderingalonelypath



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Abused Harry Potter, Alternate Hogwarts House Sorting, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Black Hermione Granger, Desi Harry Potter, Dyslexic Ron Weasley, Female Harry Potter, Female Ron Weasley, Gen, Gratuitous use of italics, Harry Potter Has PTSD, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Muslim Hermione Granger, Slytherin Harry Potter, Slytherin Hermione Granger, Slytherin Ron Weasley, The Sorting Hat, eventual ronmione and drarry if i make it a series, trauma-induced short term memory loss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-29
Updated: 2021-01-29
Packaged: 2021-03-15 10:40:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29062992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wanderingalonelypath/pseuds/wanderingalonelypath
Summary: Three girls walk into Hogwarts for the first time, and lives are changed in ways unexpected.ORI turned the Golden Trio into a Slytherin girl gang. What more could you ask for?
Relationships: Hermione Granger & Harry Potter & Ron Weasley
Comments: 13
Kudos: 161





	rattle your chains

~HP~

Harry Potter walked into Hogwarts with the taste of dust still on her tongue.

She still couldn’t quite believe this was all happening. That a real, live giant had swept her away into a life of magic and fantasy, a life that her parents had apparently been a part of. That they hadn’t died in a car accident and that they weren’t drunks. Even after tripping over a family of redheads at King’s Cross and running through a _wall_ with the only one her age, a deviously freckled girl with hair red like her own, but straighter than her riotous mass of curls, and climbing onto a train that took her to an actual castle, which was apparently a school for people like her. Wizards. _Witches._

(The girl had found her again on the train, introducing herself with a grin and eyes so blue they nearly _burned_ by saying, “Veronica Weasley, but call me Ronnie, or Ron. Bloody hate my real name.” She called her scar “wicked” and offered to share sandwiches with her, the first food in her life freely given, and she decided then and there that she liked Ron Weasley very much indeed.)

The hall, “the Great Hall” as that Hermione girl had called it, was opulent in a way that was so foreign to her she almost forgot that she woke up with a spider sleeping on her arm just this morning. Not that she really minded the spiders after all these years; at least they were better company than Dudley.

The sorting began and she could barely keep up, hurriedly trying to remember what Ron had told her about the houses on the train ride over but found she couldn’t recount the specifics. Everything that had happened in the past hours, past days, had been so...so _much_ and she couldn’t help the shiver of fear down her spine when she realized she could remember the names of the houses but not their meanings and had to forcibly remind herself that Aunt Petunia was a hundred miles away and couldn’t slap her for forgetting things like she did sometimes.

When her name was finally called she felt her stomach drop out as a hush descended over the hall. She had to remember she was some kind of a legend to these people. Her people. Another thing she couldn’t remember. The woman with a stern face and a kind smile (Professor McGonagall, she reminded herself, willing it to stick in her mind) gestured her to the stool, and she was as stiff as stone as the hat was lowered onto her head.

 _Well, well, well, what have we here?_ She suppressed another shiver. It was odd to have another presence in her mind. She clenched her hands around the edges of the stool so they wouldn’t start shaking.

 _No need for that little one, I’m all talk!_ The hat cackled in her head, and somehow the abrupt joy let her relax a bit.

 _Now let’s see…_ It said, and she felt a tingling in her head. She had the oddest thought it was poking through her memories, and it probably was if she understood how this whole ceremony worked. _Hmm...curious indeed. You would make a good Gryffindor, like your parents-_ She perked up at that, but it didn’t seem keen on elaborating. _But…_ It trailed off, going silent once more.

She heard whispers beginning to rise in the masses below, and she resisted the urge to pick at her fingernails. It wasn’t supposed to take this long, was it? She was doing it wrong, she was doing it wrong and they were going to kick her out, send her back to the Dursley’s-she couldn’t go back. She had just barely started to drink of this magical world, barely tasted it, and she was _thirsty_ for it, she had to _stay_.

 _You would do well in Slytherin._ It said, and she managed to snatch a memory out of her panic, of Ron saying Slytherin was the bad house, with the evil wizards, and she remembered the blond boy from before, sneering at one of the only people who had ever been kind to her, and she was shaking her head before she realized.

 _You could be great, in Slytherin._ And she could still taste the dust on her tongue.

She is seven, running from Dudley one moment and on the roof the next.

She is ten, biting her lip almost as bloody as her back as Uncle Vernon beat her with his belt for breaking his favorite mug. She watched with teary eyes as the window above the sink began a slow, spider web cracking.

She is eleven, and the first kind word she had heard in years is coming from the mouth of a _snake_.

She is eleven, holding a wand, and the fire of magic under her skin is like nothing else she had ever felt before, and she wants _more_.

 _You could be great._ The hat whispers, and she wonders what she would have done in all those broken memories if she had known she had magic.

 _I want to be great._ She whispers back to it, and the hall falls deathly silent when the hat roars “SLYTHERIN!”

~HG~

Hermione Granger walked into Hogwarts for the first time with a hunger deep in her stomach.

Not a physical hunger, her parents made sure she was well fed when she left the house and gave her food for the train, but this was an intangible, visceral reaching that nearly consumed her as she flicked her eyes from this to that, determined to take in every inch of the life she had been gifted.

And it was a gift, she knew.

There had always been something missing from her life. She had known this since she was old enough to read, to learn, to _understand_. Some crucial part of her was gone, or yet to arrive, and it hung over her like a death shroud, left her always wanting. Her parents were kind, her studies in primary were easy, and while her family wasn’t wealthy, she never wanted.

She never wanted, but she was never satisfied.

Hermione Granger didn’t just seek out knowledge; once she found it, she _devoured_ it with a speed and viciousness that frightened her sometimes, forever trying to fill that hole inside her.

Her hunger only contributed to her otherness, whether at home or at school or at the mosque.

She has always been an outside element, she realizes, never quite slotting where she is supposed to or blending in, whether because of her dark skin, kinky hair, hijabs on some days but not on others (damned if she does and damned if she doesn’t, no matter that she prays three times a day like the rest of them), and in the end, the fact that she is a witch is not a surprise but rather a natural progression.

The first time she timidly picked up her wand in Ollivanders, the magic trickled through her veins like a warm summer stream, and that empty spot inside her began to fill. She wanted _more_.

She was still recounting little tidbits of information from Hogwarts: A History when Professor McGonagall called her name, and she tried to keep calm as she let the sorting hat fall on her head. She read as much as she could about the ceremony but nothing could prepare her for the voice in her head.

 _Ah, you are an interesting one. Quite the mind you have on you; you would do well in Ravenclaw._ She recalled the house description by rote: intelligent, creative, witty, wise. She had to agree with the hat, pushing down the part of her that protested that that’s where everyone thought she would go, the know-it-all bookworm. The hat heard her anyway.

 _Not a good fit, then? Let’s see...._ It trailed off. _There’s a hunger in you. But what are you hungry for, Miss Granger? What do you want?_ It asked. 

What a vague, broad question. Who could expect a child, even one like her, to have an answer for that?

And yet the thoughts rose, forming and telling without her even needing to contemplate on the answer.

 _What do you want?_ It asked.

_Everything._

She didn't think hats could laugh, but magic had broken and reformed all the rules she thought she knew about life. _Well, I know exactly where to put you, then. But I must warn you, Miss Granger, that because of who you are, your path in this house will not be easy._

She remembered this chapter: the wizarding community held blood status in great esteem, but then she remembered that she already lived eleven years as a black Muslim girl in Britain; if more discrimination was the price she had to pay for _magic_ then her decision was clear.

She felt something almost like approval tingle through her head, before the hat was roaring “SLYTHERIN!”

~RW~

Veronica Weasley, Ronnie or Ron to everyone except her mother when she was particularly angry, had been waiting for this day for her entire life.

Growing up with five wizards as older brothers had let her know the ins and outs of magic before she was even old enough to de-gnome the garden on her own. She had watched her mum flicking and swishing her wand all around the house since she had been a chubby toddler propped on her hip, and she seemed to have a sixth sense for when anyone else was using magic in her vicinity, eyes snapping and seeking and watching.

The twins teased her, saying she was jealous and obsessed, and Ron never dared to tell them that she absolutely was. It was nearly torture to wait for when she was old enough to actually use magic for herself (as much as ‘for herself’ meant when she had hand-me-down everything, including her wand).

When she was growing up her mum tried to get her to read about what she’d learn in Hogwarts; standard children’s books for young witches and wizards to learn theory before they could practice, but she could only stare at the page for a few minutes before the letters started moving and switching around, so she abandoned that pretty quick. She was much better at learning by watching and, eventually, doing. It was much simpler than reading, simpler than theory; in watching you learn that there is a right way to do a spell, and a wrong way, and the lines drawn in the sand are almost like the lines on a chessboard and appeal to her that much more.

When mum finally gave her Charlie’s wand a week before leaving for Hogwarts, she felt the magic down to her bones, rumbling and cracking like an earthquake.

She can’t seem to wipe the grin off her face as she walks into the Great Hall with Harry (Harry bloody Potter, she can’t believe her luck that she met someone so cool on the train) and stays even as the twins tease her from the Gryffindor table, but still shift to make room for her for when she’s sorted.

The grin slowly starts to fall as Hermione, the bookworm from the train, a _muggleborn_ is sorted Slytherin, and she can’t get the cruelty of it out of her head. Pricks like Malfoy would eat her alive there.

Her grin disappears when Harry is sorted the same.

There were a few solid facts she had known all her life: mum’s cooking is the best, never trust food or drink from the twins, toss gnomes before they bite, and Slytherins are bad people.

It had seemed like a fact of nature, coming from a family of Gryffindors. It was reinforced whenever dad came home grumbling about Malfoy Sr., or when Fred and George came home whispering about the pranks they pulled on the 6th year Slytherin that was bullying one of the 2nd year Hufflepuffs that year.

And yet both Hermione and Harry both went to Slytherin.

Granted, she hadn’t known them for that long, but they didn’t seem like Slytherins. They didn’t seem...evil. Hermione talked too much and Harry flinched if Ron moved too fast, but they were both nice and even complimented mum’s sandwiches, how could they be _Slytherins_?

Her shock lasted until her own name was called, and she moved to the hat feeling much more unsure than she had been only minutes before. Her mind was still reeling when the hat was lowered onto her head.

 _Ah, another Weasley, hmm?_ And maybe it was the way her worldview was shifting or how her mind was running a mile a minute but something about the way he said that made her _bristle_. Another Weasley, like that's all she was, like that was all that mattered about her: her name, her brothers.

To say that she had never minded being the sixth child was...a lie. She had minded. She had minded a lot. Everything she had done, they had done before, until it almost felt like mum and dad were just going through the motions of raising her instead of paying attention. The only difference being that she had to have an embarrassing talk when she found blood in her knickers halfway through summer.

Nothing was her own, from her wand to her shoes to even her clothes; Ron Weasley would get no new skirts or pretty dresses because they simply couldn’t afford to buy her any. Not that she particularly wanted to wear skirts or dresses, but the option not being there bothered her a bit.

But that was fine. It was fine. She made do.

But this? She thought once she finally came to Hogwarts, finally became a witch in full, she would start carving her own path.

But no, she had to remember, this had been done before. Five times. She was just another Weasley, and for some reason, the thought nearly infuriated her.

 _Well now, that is interesting._ The hat snapped her out of her rage, and she realized with a start that he could see everything in her head. _Well, there certainly is Gryffindor in you, I’ll admit. Fiercely loyal and protective, just like your brothers-_ she shoved down the spike of anger, reminding herself that everything he’s saying is a _good_ thing, her brothers are _good_ people.

_But there’s something different about you._

She sucked in a slow breath. She didn’t realize how much she had wanted to hear those words before someone had actually said them. Was it a bad thing? Wanting to be different from her family? She cast her eyes to the twins, watching their smiles droop the longer the hat took to place her.

_Always fighting for your place, always wanting to prove yourself. Prove what? What do you want, Miss Weasley?_

When was the last time anyone asked her that?

She looked over to the Slytherin table, where Malfoy sat sneering at Harry and Hermione, her, her friends-

_I want…_

She looked to the twins, nearly frowning, wondering why it was taking her so long to go where she clearly belonged. To Percy, who was looking at her with a tilt of his head and a calculating look in his eyes.

_I want…_

Absurdly, her mind snagged on a winter memory years before, of playing out near the little pond that froze over in the field, and how one of the twins had idly said the icy sheen was the same color as her eyes. Her eyes, not Percy’s or Bill’s or dad’s, and they were right. Her brothers and dad all had deep blue eyes, rolling like ocean tides. The rest of her family had a deep, dark brown, like freshly tilled earth. Her’s were frozen, her’s were ice, her’s _burned_ you when she looked at you. 

Maybe she had always been different.

She clenched her jaw, her fists, and thought of that icy pond.

 _I **want**_.

 _I thought so._ The hat said back, and she was careful not to look at her brothers when the hat practically screamed “SLYTHERIN!”


End file.
